Comment by cs702 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cs702 | Hacker News Reader

JustFab is not a 'scam company' (in the sense that they may not be doing anything technically illegal), but they are using DARK DESIGN PATTERNS[1] to trick at least some people into doing things they don't want to do.

The checkout page[2], in particular, seems designed specifically to trick people into signing up for recurring monthly charges. Any person who adds merchandise to the cart and then clicks the big 'Continue Checkout' button -- without stopping to read all the surrounding text -- will unintentionally sign up for the $39.95/month "VIP" plan.

My mom, who is trusting by nature, would never stop to read all that surrounding text, because she has been conditioned by years of online ordering to add items to a cart and then find and click the big checkout button. She would be tricked into signing up for recurring charges.

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[1] See http://darkpatterns.org/

[2] http://imagesup.net/?di=15138026329215 -- this was posted by one of the company's investors elsewhere on this thread. It's a canonical example of a dark design pattern.

No, seriously, if your business model is based on tricking people into paying for something they don’t want and didn’t realize they’re getting charged for (no meeting of the minds), your company is a scam company. It’s simple as that.

exactly, a business model that tricks customers is not a business model, it is a scam and fraudulent

It really depends upon the percentages. From my experiences pretty much any website will trick someone, regardless of your intentions otherwise.

Despite having to: choose a price, click a "I agree to be charged $<dollar amount> every month" checkbox, and enter their credit card information, a subscription-based website I used to run still got emails from people complaining, saying that they didn't want us to charge them yet.

It depends more on intent than percentages. If you set out to mislead and only a few people fall for it, then it is still a scam, albeit not a very effective one.

On the other hand, if your intentions are honest, but a ton of people are confused, then it is not a scam. It is just poor execution. Of course, if you become aware of this but do nothing to address it, then your intent becomes questionable.

Agreed. This was a standard practice in adult and it got so out of hand, people signing up for a $2 day trial but their credit cards were getting banged for hundreds of dollars because they didn't scroll down past a whole windows worth of blank space to uncheck that "Sign me up for full memberships to these 3525 other sites too for $39.95/mo" pre-checked cross-sale, causing Visa and Master Card to actually step in and take action.

It's straight up scam-tactics.

What they are doing in fact is illegal in most countries with strong consumer protection. Explicit and informed consent is not something judges and regulators take lightly.

And since they apparently operate in Germany, France and Spain, I strongly suspect they are breaking the law in one if not all of those countries.

A law has actually been passed in Germany to curtail these 'subscription services':

https://blog.avast.com/2012/04/17/here-comes-the-zahlungspfl...

Correct, and indeed, this business model is nothing new or unusual in the EU in general, or in Germany in particular. Back in the early, pre-smartphone days of mobile, a lot of European companies made fortunes by selling ringtones through a misleading subscription model similar to JustFab's. Their success soon led to a lot of imitators in the US market.

Remember those "Text 53646 to this number to get your NSync ringtone!!!" ads that used to blanket the airwaves? Texting that number got you your ringtone; it also got you $20/month in recurring fees that you were unaware of, because you were a kid, and kids usually don't read their own bills.

There may be nothing technically "illegal" about this dark pattern in the US, but the pattern is pretty fucking dark. And it's usually self-defeating in the long run. Many of the fly-by-night ringtone peddlers of the early 2000s had to flee one country after the next, always on the hunt for new suckers in new territories, always getting chased out of town by an angry mob of pissed-off customers.

This model is not sustainable. Though it's not a pyramid scheme, it shares a similar need for a fresh supply of new victims at a rate fast enough to make up for churn. Churn starts to reach critical mass at some point, forcing the company to expand into a new country altogether.

Then again, sometimes the model just works. Look at GoDaddy. As far as I can tell, they make a shit-ton of money by making it as hard as humanly possible to break subscriptions and hidden upsells, and sadly, they're still around.

Pre-internet, or at least widespread internet, there was a similar scam with music tapes, perhaps records even before that. The first month's selections would be free but for shipping, after that they would send you a bunch every month if they didn't hear from you — and a hefty bill.

One major difference: JustFab doesn't send you anything, they give you "credits" which can be used for future purchase but most likely got un-noticed and un-used.

So at worst, you'd pay for one item in the first cycle and then cancel.

Also, at least back in the bad old days when I was at various times a "member" of various book clubs, you got sent a bill, the company didn't charge you and enjoy float (interest earned on bank balances) like this company does on their credits.

And those credits will evaporate if/when this company goes out of business.

"Credits" are in some cases more insidious than being sent physical goods, because they're less likely to be noticed. And you'd be surprised how slowly most people realize they've been subscribed to a service -- especially if the billing for that service is under a fairly innocuous-sounding or obscure name (as is often the case).

Paying "for one item in the first cycle and then cancel[ing]" is probably an exceptional case. I'd be willing to bet that it takes most users two, maybe even three or more cycles to notice and then break the subscription.

Yes, it's called "negative-option billing," as practiced by the Book of the Month Club, Columbia Record Club, and others.

buying stamps "on approval" predates all of these

you know who the most successful company was in this "ringtone" bussines? Jamba, who was Jamba? the Samwer Brothers. just saying.

JustFab is not a scam company...but they are using DARK DESIGN PATTERNS

So...they are a scam company? Just because you can try to apply different terms to describe their business, doesn't mean they aren't operating mainly to scam people out of their money.

Let's not whitewash it though. That's a scam.

Nah, it is a scam company as this type of activity is considered fraudulent in any sane country. Please edit your post accordingly.

It seems to me that calling scam behavior a "dark design pattern" just serves to legitimize it.

You just perfectly described a scam.

The image you posted is way more informative than this one: http://i.imgur.com/ctMDiCJ.png

Which one is most recent?

Frankly I don't see the difference between a company that tricks people into expensive recurring charges and a scam.

come on, it's a scam, pure and simple

Wait, so actually OP's girlfriend would have had a bunch of credits they could spend on items, right?

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